IF LOVE is genuine, it will always express itself strongly — with passion, with drive. It will always be hot and it just cannot keep to itself, passive and inactive. It has to overflow and touch the lives of others and the state of things. In fact, it seeks to transform and enrich others without counting the cost. It is also convinced that by giving, it is actually also receiving and gaining much more than what it gives away.
Yes, there is a certain madness to it, but one that is compatible with peace and joy. There is no bitterness involved, although a certain healthy tension characterizes it. It does not leave behind rationality, prudence and common sense. Its excesses are those of pure goodness. In this department, it is not sparing. It gives itself in abundance and without calculation, without measure.
Authentic love is not just a matter of feeling good. It is very much compatible with sacrifices, self-denial and self-giving. It goes beyond the realm of our emotions and feelings, and other worldly standards. It is, first and foremost, spiritual and supernatural.
We have to examine ourselves to see if our love has this kind of passion. To be sure, this is what is proper to us. A person who is not truly in love is actually demeaning his being a person. That’s because a person by definition is meant for love. He has been made and equipped for it.
One sure standard we can use to see if we are truly in love is to check out on how we are using our time. Time, as we know, is precisely the ‘space’ meant for probing how our love is. If we make good use of time, then we are in love. If we just waste it away, it’s a clear sign we are not in love. That simple!
And so our love should lead us to organize our day well, making clear our goals that are arranged in their proper priority — God first, then others, then us. With this order, love can work in consistency. Otherwise, our love would at best be just apparent.
God has to be first. And not only first, but also always, that is, constantly, abidingly. And that is simply because God himself is love, “Deus caritas est,” and as such is the source, pattern, energy and end of love.
And this love is manifested to us in Christ who shares it with us in a vital, existential way, through his word, the sacraments and the countless other ways in which his presence and continuing action on us take place.
Christ already set this order of love when in that episode of him as a child who got lost and then found, he told his worried mother, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Lk 2, 49) And in another instance, he said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish his work.” (Jn 4, 34) And he fulfilled this all the way to the cross.
We have to have this kind of love daily and expressed in the usual things of our day. So we need to make some kind of daily plan, schedule, strategy that would outline as clearly as possible that the concrete things that we need to do out of love for God and for everybody else.
For this, we need to continually grow in our competence and sense of responsibility, always studying and reviewing whether what we have done so far are in accord with how things ideally should be.
Love’s passion never sacrifices rationality, much less, our faith and hope./PN
